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Sometimes I think I must still be in the “denial” phase. Happens every morning when I wake up and I expect her to be there. Or when, half-asleep, I reach over to touch someone who isn’t there. I used to do this sometimes to reassure myself that she was still breathing — she would be so still when she slept, it would scare me sometimes. I was that paranoid she’d die. But not paranoid enough, or at the right time, apparently.

I’ll think: she’ll be there when I come home.

I’ll think: she’s away on a trip. She’ll be back.

Only two things seem able to push her out of my head. Maybe three. Patient care does it; I think I knew that instinctively, which is why I went back to work so quickly. If I get caught up in a book or movie, that helps. And thinking about other women, that surprisingly is the most effective trick. This is something I never would have predicted. I would have thought it impossible to think about other women when you’re grieving for someone so dear. Turns out it’s easy. It feels like a physical force, like magnetism or gravity. I want to fill that huge sucking hole. They say you shouldn’t make any important decisions (like marriage) in the first year. I can see the sense of that. And it’s not an irrational urge; I mean, I don’t feel like I want to fill the gap with just anyone. Naturally, I want what I had with Karen, and that is no easy thing to come by.

Just glum right now because I’m working on bills. Procrastinating RIGHT now, obviously, but the bills are there at my left side, waiting to be paid. This is something Karen did for years, and then as she declined, we did it together, but now it never fails to upset me.

I’ve taken to lying to my patients when they ask about my family. Oh, we’re fine, I say. Just fine.